


The Best Laid Plans

by OtakuAngelD



Series: The Emperor and the Doctor [3]
Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Birthday Fluff, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 14:37:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1391377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtakuAngelD/pseuds/OtakuAngelD
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Galactic Emperor wants one thing for his birthday. What he wants, he gets. However, not always in the way he expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Laid Plans

He did a swift once over of the room. It was perfect. It had to be. After far too many meetings of state and a very long, very formal birthday dinner that never ended. He endured it. He had to. It was his day after all. All the galaxy had done their part to acknowledge the day that their Emperor had been born. But after all the tributes, all the meetings, all the gifts, all the food, he had been more than happy to finally excuse himself back to his chambers in Hyotei palace. More than eager, because he already knew there was one more present yet to come.

He had been very adamant with his head advisor. He knew the man wouldn’t let him down. All he had to do was sit and wait. Lowering himself elegantly into the single chair in the room, the candlelight flickering, casting a glow of gold in the cool darkness. Wait and anticipate. Saitou had never let him down before. His doctor would be there.

His doctor...his Osamu. It had been too long. It pained him so to send the man away with the Sagittarius. The doctor’s true place was at his side. Even a few months was too long and he once again considered just locking the man away. Keeping him in the palace, accessible only to himself. He could do it. No one would stop him. He was the Emperor after all.

However, minutes turned to hours. Osamu didn’t show… The one thing he actually wanted for his birthday and it hadn’t happened. His eyebrows drew down and his expression turned dark. Where was he? Where was his doctor? Had Saitou failed him after all? It had never happened before like that. Had the scruffy man been far too much for the advisor to handle? Or perhaps…

Sakaki had seen them together. His advisor and his doctor. He knew they were close. Sometimes, he felt they were too close. He grew deeply jealous when he saw his Osamu hugging on Saitou. Looking up at the Choushin with a bright smile. A smile that had once belonged to Sakaki. A smile he had stolen away over time. Yet somehow, even after all that had happened, no matter how he had broken the man, he still could smile like that. Like Osamu had smiled the first day the Emperor had met him.

When he had still been Prince and not Emperor and Osamu had been a fresh far too young medical genius from Shitenhouji City. He had been tasked to review the recruits that would be going to Mars. As per tradition, at his arrival, the recruits had immediately bowed. All except the scruffy young country doctor in the back. That man stood and just stared at him. Without hesitation, he had gone back there to confront the young man. A young man that looked him dead in the eyes. Sakaki remembered how those hazel eyes had danced with such energy and amusement even when Sakaki had demanded to know why the medic hadn’t bowed to the Prince.

“Because this is my first time seeing a prince in person. I mean I’ve seen you all the time, behind the Emperor on all sorts of news and videos. Not the same though.” He shrugged, that delightful, playful little accent lilting though his words. “I didn’t want my first time seeing one to be a sight of his shoes. Though I’m sure they’re nice...”

“Is it?” Sakaki was intrigued by this young man. Probably the same age as his son. Yet he seemed so different from Keigo. There was a light. A spark. A joy for life he hadn’t seen at the capitol. “And how do you find your first meeting, hmm?” He looked at the little nameplate on the youth’s chest. “Watanabe.”

“Honestly…” Those eyes looked him over. Such intelligent eyes…So full of razor sharp wit. “I thought you’d be taller. And it’s just Osamu...” He reached out a hand. Sakaki had been taken aback. No one had dared reach out towards the crown prince like that. Without malice or without wanting something. Just to greet him as...as an equal. At the time, he had wondered if this was an Osakan thing or just something this man did without thinking. His guards tackled the man and he looked down on the doctor, pinned to the ground. 

He looked down and a part of him started to stir. A dark part that had never woken for his wife, no matter how he tried. A part he had thought he had contained long ago. He thought the man would struggle. Instead, Dr Watanabe had just laid there, body twisted by his guards into what had to be a truly painful position. He had to be in such pain, yet he laughed. He laughed and smiled up at him. A shining beautiful smile.

“Well, what do you know, I was right...they are really nice shoes.” He could only stare at the man. At that warm smile. That happy laugh followed him as he left and he knew….he knew right then. He had to have that doctor. 

That had been so long ago. So many things had happened since then. He did have Osamu now. Not in the way he truly wanted but he knew he could never have that. Whatever madness had grabbed hold of him on the Red Planet had made it so that it could never be more than what it was. He would continue to want the man. He would keep hurting him as well. He was trapped in his complex feeling of both love and possession. He didn’t know what Osamu might feel for him, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care because once upon a time, the man had come to him. Willingly come and sought his touch, if only to quiet the doctor’s own growing madness for a moment.

He came out of his small bit of nostalgia. The doctor was still not at his door. His frown grew even darker. His thoughts followed. Why had Saitou not done as asked? His mind went to the thought he had started to entertain before.

The thought that Saitou might have become attached to the doctor romantically was infuriating. Saitou wouldn’t dare. He wouldn’t dare to take his doctor away from him. Saitou wasn’t that foolish. He wasn’t disloyal. He’d known the man for years. He also knew it wasn’t in the nature of Choushins to be anything but loyal. He had to just be projecting his annoyance. Getting jealous over things that he was only imagining. He trusted his advisor. That man was the only man he could trust not to do anything to Osamu. The advisor wouldn’t have dumped the doctor into the bath and discovered finally what Sakaki knew all along...that the scruffy man was irresistible. He knew that just wasn’t Saitou and the man must have had a reason. That still didn’t erase the small nagging annoyance. The idea that this one time, Saitou hadn’t done as he’d asked. But then why wasn’t he here?

Standing, he abandoned the nice candle lit dinner he had gotten set out for the man he had been waiting for. If Osamu wasn’t coming to him...he was going to once more go to Osamu.

He swept from his anti-chamber out into the halls, towards the small room that housed the man when he was in the palace. He didn’t need Osamu’s door code because he knew the man didn’t have one. With the way his memory was, there would be no way he could remember it. He just pressed the button, annoyance growing by the second. In his head, he was already picturing what he might be walking in on.

He swept through the door and spotted the man immediately. He wasn’t in a compromising position. He wasn’t naked and pinned to the bed by a too tall alien advisor. Instead, the man was curled on his bed, sound asleep, arms clutched around the pillow as if in protest. Even in the darkness of the room, Sakaki could see the dark circles under the man’s eyes, framed by thick lashes. His rumpled pajamas riding up just slightly. Asleep. His doctor was sound asleep. 

Sakaki approached quietly. He didn’t see any empty packets or any needles or vials or anything else. Strange. Had Saitou somehow managed to get the man to sleep without the use of chemical help? How long had it been, he wondered, since the man had had a full night without being in a drug induced haze. Probably too long. He wondered what the man dreamt of. Did he hear the screaming, even in his dreams? Did the horrors follow him even into rest? Or did he dream of happy things. Perhaps of a son, headed off to university, to follow in his father’s steps as a doctor. Or maybe...the two of them, in some other place. Another time, where Sakaki could adore the man openly. Where he didn’t have to keep hurting Osamu.

He felt his heart clench again and he sat on the bed beside the sleeping man. Immediately, Osamu shifted, curling towards the warmth. Still asleep then. He knew had the man been awake, he would have stiffened and tried to pull away from him. “It seems you’re far more honest in your sleep…” He murmured and reached to lightly tread his fingers through unruly hair.

He shifted more, until he had the man’s head against one leg. His hand never stopped moving, petting his hair as if Osamu was a favored pet. Whatever anger and jealousy he had felt had vanished. In fact, sitting here like this, most of the stress and worries of being the ruler of a vast empire melted away. Somehow, he found that being with Osamu made such problems vanish for a time. Just like it had way back then when those problems had been aliens trying to kill them all. When he spent time with the man, he always came back much better off than when he went, his most violent urges sated with that luscious body.

His hand went from the man’s hair to his face, feeling the scratch of near permanent stubble. For a moment, that peaceful face grew a little strained. In his sleep, Osamu whimpered slightly. So, a nightmare then. Leaning, he pressed a kiss to the man’s forehead. “Shhh. It’s all right. I’m here. I won’t let anything hurt you.” It wasn’t true at all. Sakaki would break that promise personally. He would hurt Osamu a lot. But for now, the lie seemed to sooth the man. Osamu calmed, curled up more, arms abandoning the pillow to wrap around Sakai’s middle. 

He shifted back up and continued to lightly stroke the man’s face. Whatever terrors in Osamu’s dreams had passed. In the darkness, he could see the small, sweet ghost of a smile on lips he longed to claim. So, the man could still smile like that for him too.

He couldn’t be angry at Saitou any more. There was just no way he could. He understood. He could imagine it now. The Choushin must have come in to do his bidding and found Osamu like this. He could almost hear the put out sigh of the man, burdened with trying to rangle Osamu into waking and being unable to do so. He could picture the man tucking the doctor in and shaking his head and muttering things about how the Emperor was going to be mad at him before he left the doctor to his much needed sleep. He understood because not even Sakaki had the heart to wake the man. He’d still have words with his Advisor but he would also forgive him. It might not have been what he wanted, but it was still such a gift. The gift of this man, clinging to him, smiling for him, trusting him again, even if for one night.


End file.
